"...Probably. I can't normally gate to people as targets, and whether this is enough of a landscape feature to get around that requirement, I don't know."

"The target will be larger, since Scion's garden with luck won't be spread across realities as we feared. That earth might even have no landscape at all other than this."

"Somebody who can operate without air would be useful to double-check it, then. All I did when I was finding Hawthorn on the 'does it have atmosphere' question was stick a finger through. I can manage it with Kept but for information security and my little preference for volunteers."

"We can manage that part with technology. We can't manage getting there, or, as of very recently, convincing the world's most destructive Tinker to remove a planet."

"...So you also want to borrow String Theory?"

"She's not necessary, but would be a first choice. If not her, the Elite have a villain who could do it eventually, and Eidolon's power might or might not provide something."

"I mean, I can probably sell her on 'hey String Theory, want to wreck a planet', I was just checking."

"I'm sure you can. Tell her whatever resources she needs will be provided, and you'll probably have other Tinkers begging to join."

"They're not the best at teamwork, but noted."

"...I can't die," Promise says. "I am immortal. If I am physically obliterated I will reappear a couple of minutes later, intact, in a different outfit, groggy, and pissed off. If I am less than physically obliterated you should be able to heal me on the spot if you have anyone handy who can heal."

"You can't die by having your body destroyed. If you get trapped in a loop repeating the same six seconds over and over? Or have your ability to form conscious thoughts stripped away? There are ways to end up beyond our ability to help without also being destroyed."

"Then don't use the word 'die'. If I am irretrievably incapacitated what good will a hidden gate to Fairyland do you?"

"Tell someone to pass on the information if you're ever effectively dead. We enslave a sorcerer—sending Contessa, not Eidolon—and not everything depends on your availability to gate to Scion. With any luck this will never come up, but contingency plans are often unpleasant ones."

"I'll borrow a gate-capable one of Peak's sorcerers and keep them in Hawthorn; will that do?"

"It should. The advantage of Fairyland is that it seems to be strictly impossible for Scion or parahumans to get there on their own. Two points of failure is almost certainly enough, but it's still a risk, however small."

"If I leave a gate open it is not impossible for people to get there," Promise says. "Actually, if just a gate, any gate, will do, some powers can destroy gates; you could de-pair one of the pairs I sold the Protectorate. Do we have an approximate timeline? The gate destination won't be flat and may take a while to settle."

"We can have equipment for surviving a hostile atmosphere within the hour. Most of the time will come from how long it takes the tinkers. That will probably take on the order of months if they start from scratch, or as low as necessary, down to minutes, if their existing designs can be used. String Theory will be able to tell you a precise deadline when she starts blueprinting. That will be a hard limit."

"I'll consult her, then. It'd probably be safest to have her do the construction somewhere on Scion's planet. Would that alert him or anything?"

"We have no way of knowing. But there are unoccupied habitable earths to choose from."

"Yes, but that makes transporting it to Scion's planet a possible bottleneck. Eh. Probably less dangerous than risking him noticing."

"You don't think he might notice the gate itself? If I can put it where he is I can put it on the opposite side of his planet - unless it's big enough to cover the whole thing? - but it might be detectable."

"I'm sure he has some way of finding it if he's looking. Contessa can't see your gates but can know where they are if dust in the air vanishes or appears from nowhere. The bulk of Scion's attention is on Earth Bet, but we don't know his limits. No guarantees."

"So perhaps I shouldn't open it right away but wait until we have more response mechanisms in place in case it sets him off then and there."